As technology has evolved the functionality of mobile devices, such as laptops computers, cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and media players, has become correspondingly more robust. Such devices now offer capabilities that were once the exclusive domain of personal computers (PCs). In fact, some of these mobile devices now resemble small, low-end PCs with wireless access to data networks, including the Internet.
Unlike desktops or portable computers, hand-held devices and other wireless communication devices typically fail to include a keyboard, a large display, a mouse, a printer, or any other peripheral. In some instances such peripherals do exist but are either cumbersome or too small for effective use. Such devices may utilize a docking station or a port replicator to attach a standard set of peripheral devices to the computing platform. A physical connection is made between the hand-held device and the docking station, at which time the docking station provides the necessary ports to connect to those peripherals.
The primary purpose of replicators or docking stations is to provide a fast and convenient mechanism to allow the hand-held device to attach or detach from peripheral devices. This is achieved by plugging the hand-held device into the docking station, however it is not necessary to physically connect and disconnect each of the peripheral devices from the hand-held device.
With the emergence of wireless technologies, hardwired docking station connections are replaced with a wireless connection, typically by means of an ultra-wideband (UWB) connection. Examples for such wireless docking stations can be found, for example, in US patent applications Nos. 20050246470 and 20060061963, incorporated herein by reference for the useful understanding of the background of the invention.
The solutions in the above-cited applications enable wireless connectivity between a hand-held device and its respective peripherals by providing a wireless computer docking system. Specifically, a hand-held device is equipped with a UWB wireless transceiver to form a wireless connection with UWB-enabled peripheral devices without the need for a physical docking station. That is, these solutions are based on an UWB link that emulates an undefined type of input/output (I/O) bus.
Such architectures introduce major drawbacks that limit the performance of the hand-held device. For example, the UWB link requires a dedicated-controller to allow the I/O bus to operate with different peripheral standards. It also requires the installation of dedicated software to map peripheral interfaces to the I/O bus. In addition, the UWB link multiplexes between peripheral devices in order to transfer data on a relatively small bandwidth.
It would be therefore advantageous to provide a solution that would provide a wireless docking system that overcomes the drawbacks of prior art solutions.